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Entrepreneurial Center celebrates year of achievement

Savannah Morning News

Local entrepreneur Kevin Whitfield was the keynote speaker at the second annual awards banquet for The Savannah Entrepreneurial Center.

Savannah Morning News

Erica Graves

While small businesses make up more than 90 percent of the employers in the United States, keeping those companies running isn't easy. Of the approximately 6.7 million small businesses in operation in 2005, about 10 percent had to shut down.

To recognize local start-ups and their successes, The Savannah Entrepreneurial Center honored their graduates, composed mainly of women and minorities, with an awards ceremony Saturday night.

Keeping with the tradition of utilizing community resources, the event took place at the Temple of Glory Church on Stiles Avenue.

Good Service LLC, the company that manages the center, uses boxing terms for the classes and that same theme was prevalent in this second annual event. Businesses were honored in several categories including: "lightweight" for a young business that has made a "quantum leap" within one year; "middleweight" for an entrepreneur that has been in business for two years and has expanded and or added employees to their business; and "heavyweight" for an individual who took a risk to grow the business.

All nominees must have participated in business development classes, completed a business plan, received technical assistance from the center or its partners that enhance the business and be non-traditional in the choice of business enterprise or be unique in the type of business endeavor.

The keynote speaker was local entrepreneur Kevin Whitfield of Whit 1 Inc.

He started out working at Church's Chicken for $2.90 an hour and made his way up in the company to regional training manager and market leader. Along the way, he met his wife Lisa and several years after they were married, decided to open a Church's Chicken franchise of their own in Covington, Ga.

Their franchise was a success, and they sold it in order to move to Savannah and buy and operate two other Church's Chickens on Montgomery Street. Baseball legend Hank Aaron bought the Covington restaurant, but Whitfield did not let celebrity get in the way of being a good business man.

"He (Aaron) said 'Son, hold on to this check, it will be worth a lot of money some day,' " said Whitfield. "I said Mr. Aaron, it's worth a lot of money today and I'm going straight to the bank to cash it."

Whitfield admonished the honorees to keep in mind four keys to succeeding as an entrepreneur: faith, experience, commitment and the ability to dream.

Eventually the Whitfields went on to own 31 Church's Chicken franchises in Alabama, Georgia, Florida and Mississippi.

Currently the Whitfields own and operate four Church's Chicken restaurants, K&L Auto Sales Inc. and K&L Investments Properties, which consists of 30 rental properties.

Whitfield also works with the Savannah Entrepreneurial Center and mentors young entrepreneurs such as Erica Graves of "Be Coming Salon," located at 1 Johnson St., Suite 3 in Savannah. Graves took the business plan writing workshop even though she'd been in business for 16 years. After one year working with a plan, she said she sees the value it has added to her business.

"I understand the story of my business, it helped put a lot of things in perspective and where I hope to be in five years," said Graves. "Before, I thought my craft would make me successful, before I was a good hairstylist, now I am a good business woman and I can track every penny and schedule clients in a way that is profitable. Before I would make a bunch of money and lose a bunch of money, now I know where my money is going."

Graves said Whitfield and the center's workshops helped give her confidence as well as knowledge. She was able to secure a loan to expand her business and is planning on adding on to her salon and bringing in spa services.

She said Whitfield showed her how to do weekly profits and losses and showed her how to breakdown numbers that gave her an idea of how her business was doing.

"I just thought I did very pretty hair," said Graves. "He (Whitfield) showed me how profitable really pretty hair is."